In the paper today I read that United States spent total of 500 million dollars in the first ten days of military activity in Libya. I am pretty sure by now the other alliance countries would have jointly spent similar amount. A Tomahawk missile costs about a million dollar a go. And Tornado jets cost about $50000 worth of fuel for just to be in air for one hour. The continued war in Afghanistan costs about half a billion dollars per day. To top it all the total price tag for the war effort in Iraq in Afghanistan was more than a trillion dollar and still continuing. What a waste! And this without including the money spent by Gaddafis, Saddams and Talibans of this world.
Improving the lives of 100 million slum dwellers $ 4 billion
This waste of world resources on military activity is many times the total GDP of some of the poorest countries combined. This is just the monitory cost. The cost of human lives and social misery is just incalculable and will continue for years.
A fraction of this money and effort would have made a significant upliftment in the lives of millions of people in the poor countries of the world. According to UN one billion people live below poverty line. About one in five of these is ultra poor, living in immense poverty and cannot even afford a single meal a day.
Here is a breakdown of what it will cost to implement the UN’s first Millennium Development Goals:
Halving the world poverty and hunger $ 20 billion
Achieving universal primary education $ 9 billion
Halting and reversing HIV/AIDS $ 7-10 billion
Improving the lives of 100 million slum dwellers $ 4 billion
I spent hours in the hospital struggling to save just one man injured in a traffic accident and here tens of men were killed in a minute by flicker of a thumb. Does it matter whether the thumb belonged to this side or that? Should we be proud of our education, civilization and culture developed over the last 200 thousand years since the first Homo sapiens walked the earth or just lament?
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